Google Reader + Facebook Application = Digg killer?
Mario Romero has built something very interesting that’s getting more interesting all the time.
If I weren’t on Facebook and didn’t have his Google Reader application plugged into Facebook I would totally have missed it.
If you come and visit my Facebook Profile page (which is what we call a home page in Facebook land) you’ll see that I have a Google Reader component on that page with the latest headlines from my link blog. That’s Mario’s code that’s doing that.
But if you just stopped there you’d be missing what Mario just turned on.
Add that component to your own Facebook Profile and hook it up to YOUR OWN Google Reader shared page (I call it a link blog, but Google calls them “Shared Items.”).
If you do, you’ll see a page that lets you see your shared items, your friends’ shared items, and top shared items.
Wait a second, top shared items?
Yeah! But only from other Facebookers. It shows you top items for the past 12 hours, or 24 hours, or 48 hours, or the past week. And it shows how many times each item was shared.
This is the beginning of something really killer. It’s something I wanted Google to do — Google could put out a Digg-style killer that’d be a lot harder to game. Admittedly this isn’t to the level of a Digg killer yet, but it is gathering steam at a very rapid pace. There’s a lot of smart people using Google Reader — Eric Auchard at Reuters is on the list, for instance. That’ll lead to a lot better news than Digg picks on an average day.
It’s not finished, yet. I wish he’d let me click on the results and see WHO linked to each item. But this has already brought me some new blogs I didn’t know about.
The “Your Friend’s Shared Items” is already becoming a great directory of other people’s Google Reader’s Shared Items. More than 220 of my almost 3,000 friends already have added Mario’s Facebook application to their profile. Imagine the data if everyone started doing a shared feed from Google Reader and added Mario’s app to their profile!
Anyway, I’m already in love with this app, developed in Mexico by Mario. It demonstrates that a new kind of app is possible when you mix RSS into Facebook’s platform. Thanks! Oh, and it works and hasn’t failed since I added it a couple of weeks ago. Can’t wait to see what Mario does next.
Hey, Roi Carthy, do you get the power of “we are media” yet? This is just the tip of the iceberg that’s coming at us.
UPDATE: Mario just sent me a message on Facebook and said that even more features are coming in the next day or two.
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July 15th, 2007 at 3:17 am
Thanks for sharing this .
Could be a viral application and idea for other social network
July 15th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Claude: well, it certainly will cause viral use of Google Reader. Google should pay Mario cause he’ll guarantee that Google Reader will pick up a good chunk of market share off of this.
What will it do for Mario? Well, he’s already hireable because he’s built a Facebook app that actually has some utility and actually works. There’s lots of venture firms who’ll hire him to help their companies build out their Facebook strategy.
But, yeah, other social networks are going to have to react to the Facebook application platform.
We’re at the very beginning. Imagine what the apps in a year will be like?
July 15th, 2007 at 3:31 am
I have a public Google Reader feed of all the Twitter users in Ireland (or at least a lot of them)
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/user/12097132795483860408/label/twitter
but this app won’t show that, only the root shared feed - http://www.google.com/reader/shared/12097132795483860408 If I was able to use Mario’s app to show my shared Twitter label, I’d be using it.
July 15th, 2007 at 3:31 am
If Google Reader could synchronize with NetNewsWire and/or supported authenticated feeds I’d use it. I tried it for a while but ended up going back to NNW after I subscribed to Daring Fireball which requires a username & password for member feeds.
July 15th, 2007 at 3:31 am
Its kind of brain dead that Google doesnt already offer such a service. It has the data to aggregate the most read, most shared and most emailed articles. It would kill TechMeme in one fell swoop
July 15th, 2007 at 4:00 am
Great app !
July 15th, 2007 at 4:18 am
[...] Reader + Facebook Application = Digg killer? Posted on July 15, 2007 by Ian Betteridge Google Reader + Facebook Application = Digg killer?: “This is the beginning of something really killer. It’s something I wanted Google to do [...]
July 15th, 2007 at 5:37 am
Thanks for sharing this. Totally missed this app. One thing is that it’s made me (for the time being) move from NetNewsWire to Google Reader and I wouldn’t have done it without this app. I must admit it is kind of a killer to share what your reading/thinking about with your friends.
July 15th, 2007 at 5:51 am
Hey Robert,
Absolutely “getting it” now… I’m a fast learner :)
Keep up the great work!
R.
July 15th, 2007 at 6:13 am
Your post shows that you know absolutely nothing about the Digg.com community.
Digg started out as an html form with a text link input and 1 paged output with a handful of categories.
Digg was never popular because of it’s features.
You want proof that cloning/supersetting digg doesn’t work?
Check out netscape.
Case closed.
July 15th, 2007 at 7:33 am
I decided Digg was a waste of time after a few days.
Google Reader is already being gamed. I just took one of my regular feeds off because they have started posting their last eight or ten stories as new every few hours. My group of feeds on the N800 went from having a few stories a day to hundreds (mostly dups).
Even Slashdot with completely manual story selection has been gamed by people not-so subtly directing links in stories they suggest to their own blogs rather than to the original sources.
There is a place, even if print journalism disappears, for trusted news sources, and that is almost always going to involve some level of human intervention. Most of us, at least those of us that are sane, don’t want to be constantly drinking from a fire hose.
There are of course pathological cases that we should strive to eschew:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070715/D8QD02LO0.html
July 15th, 2007 at 7:51 am
(nevertheless)
I do like this Ap. I’ve got my GR shared items on several unrelated pages now allowing them to be “fresh” without my having to update them directly. Of course a really smart search engine would discount these when it comes to evaluating a sites popularity (and I assume Google already does, or soon will).
July 15th, 2007 at 8:23 am
We’ve been talking about something like this coming forth for a while, this is very exciting.
It moves into the Techmeme space too.
July 15th, 2007 at 8:32 am
the greader+facebook app is amazing, though i’m not convinced by the display in my facebook profile. i would love to see the snippets of each feed and the tags. but guess that can be worked out, the smaller of our problems.
i just noticed that mario is from mexico, like me, and that we’re going to the same university. this is sooo weird.
July 15th, 2007 at 10:22 am
This blog is just like Facebook & IPhone PR blog, I expected more when I subscribed.
July 15th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Milos: what did you expect? Me to talk about Oracle?
If you were running this blog what would YOU talk about?
July 15th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Thanks for letting us know about this cool app! I just added it to my Facebook… Great job Mario!
Radi
July 15th, 2007 at 10:41 am
Did Google Reader kill Techmeme? Did Techmeme kill Digg? Did Digg kill Slashdot?
So why must this thing kill Digg?
Is it a side effect of our culture that we’re always on the lookout for a “killer”?
It’s not good enough if it’s just a cool idea to add to the toolbox. It needs to kill something to be interesting? Give me a break.
I think I need to go get some coffee. Feeling a little cranky this morning. :-)
July 15th, 2007 at 10:43 am
Pop: of course you’re right. This won’t “kill” Digg.
It’s just me writing a sensational headline so you’ll pay attention. My original headline said “Google Reader + Facebook Application = Yummy.”
But that was more boring and the Digg killer headline focuses you on the fact that there’s attention data being collected by Google Reader that we didn’t have access to until last night.
July 15th, 2007 at 10:53 am
It could also be the stared items if we make them public. This is how I usually mark the posts I like in GReader.
I get the general interest. It goes into making group certification of content a lot easier. An abstraction of techmeme to any group of people. The great thing is that there are much more readers than bloggers that can come in and contribute with the editorial capacity without having to post to direct attention. It also helps to separate the two main functions of the blog, creating content and directing attention.
July 15th, 2007 at 11:18 am
“If you were running this blog what would YOU talk about?”
I would take the needle slowly off the vinyl, and avoid any more crackle and pops from the recursive groove pattern.
There is so much you aren’t covering. You are simply mirroring the popular RSS and techmeme topics. Take a tour of mugshot.org and see what the real geeks are talking about. VC are NOT real geeks. They’re the sly dogs that take advantage of people who aren’t very smart.
July 15th, 2007 at 11:29 am
Chris: you must assume I hang out with VCs. I don’t talk with them very much. It’s the everyday person and influencer here that I talk with that are STILL excited about Facebook and iPhone.
July 15th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Chris out of interest, why do you still bother to read Scobles blog? You criticise in the comments of every post. Why read something that you hold in such contempt?
July 15th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
[...] application that demonstrated the power of Facebook applications this is it. I found this through Scobleizer and am excited at the potential. The application is called Google Reader Shared Items.The idea is [...]
July 15th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
[...] Google Reader + Facebook Application = Digg killer [...]
July 15th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I am there with Pop on the need to carefully use word “killer”. Scoble you should take a lead in killing the use of headlines which use “killer or killed”. Harmone bias is so stereotypical.
http://www.onemoreidea.org/new-media-killeth-a-lot/
Love your post though and added Mario’s app in my facebook.
Cheers
Brij
July 15th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
While I think it is great that Facebook is allowing sites to build apps that plug into their service, it doesn’t feel like they have much of a strategy around the best way to take advantage of it at the product level (i.e. what’s the point of all the apps in the big picture of Facebook?).
For example, my Facebook page is quickly becoming a mess of random boxes from one web service or another. There is no integration of the data into the Facebook experience.
In other words, Facebook isn’t really adding any value to the experience by letting me add these boxes. Sure, I can add whatever you want and move the stuff around; however, what does that give me, the people who read my Facebook page or Facebook itself long-term? I’d say not much. Seems kind of like MySpace with a better look-and-feel.
DISCLAIMER: I am the co-founder of Profilactic, so the rest of this post may come off like an infomercial :)
The reason we built Profilactic was to actually add something to the experience, not just give people a place to throw random feeds.
On Profilactic, you add the feeds for the networks you belong to (we support over 40 by default and you can add unlimited custom URLs and feeds) and we put them together into a cohesive package that’s easier to consume.
To me, Facebook is missing the point by just supporting random 3rd party apps. While it will definitely get them some attention in the short term, I think people are more caught up in the hype of adding the latest app than they are getting real benefit from the apps.
Just as a comparison, check out my Facebook page which has iLike, Google Reader, twitter, Shelfari etc.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500320191
And then check out my Profilactic mashup that has all of that (and more) in a much more useful (IMNSHO) format. And there is no need for a 3rd party app.
http://www.profilactic.com/mashup/smorty71
I think Facebook is being lazy because they have huge member numbers and ridiculous valuations; however, if you take a hard look at the product itself, there isn’t much there.
July 15th, 2007 at 4:23 pm
Smorty - nonsense. Each of the ‘apps’ you have added are silos of your data and disparate from that of your network.
With Platform, you have the power of numbers. Take the Google Reader app Robert posted. It not only lets people show their shared items, but aggregates them with all other Facebook users. THAT is where the power and value is. Not just the ability to add a simple app to your profile.
July 15th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
#28, SoWhatChuThink gets it right. There’s a LOT to Facebook that smorty is missing.
July 15th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Thanks for mentioning this–seeing the top shared stories among Facebook folks running this app is really fun. It’s a little between Techmeme and digg.
July 15th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Outstanding find, Robert. I’ve been sending my friends in media and tech journalism a link to my Shared link blog for the past few months, but couldn’t see how to share this with a wider group of colleagues until now. Content aggregators + social networks. Now that’s a meaningful mashup!
I’d love to see social-network (facebook or others) add a similar media-picks-sharing for podcasts and internet video. When audio video aggregators exist, why should RSS be the only aggregation/sharing tool?
July 15th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Robert, SoWhatChuThink,
I know there is more to Facebook (and I generally enjoy the site); however, I just wanted to address the topic of the apps (since that what this post was focusing on).
Sure, the Google Reader app lets you see what your Friends are sharing and see trends across the entire network. That’s definitely cool and useful.
My larger question is the fact that, while Facebook is facilitating it, they are not really taking advantage of it by baking it into the product. They are letting the Mario Romeros of the world do that.
So while it is great that they are allowing users to extend their platform, the fact that they aren’t doing more of this cool stuff themselves seems like a lack of vision on their part.
I actually regret bringing up my site (see, I left the name out :) in my previous post because it makes all of my comments about Facebook seem to have the agenda of promoting our service. I was just using it to point out that Facebook could be doing more with apps on the product side, rather than just enabling them on the platform side, to make a much more integrated and cohesive product.
And I agree, there is a lot to Facebook. I was just commenting on the apps since that was the topic at hand.
July 15th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
[...] notícia de que o Google Reader , através do Shared Itens, poderia ser implementado ao Facebook. Segundo o blogger do ótimo Scobelizer, essa união traria um efeito Digg Killer. Na verdade não foi um afirmação, e sim um [...]
July 15th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
OMG Scoble man! thanks a million for this write-up, this is beyond cool.. Just wanted to let you know I’m getting together with a couple of friends and we will keep developing this thing trough, this is just the beginning :) btw your requested feature is coming soon.. as in tonight! :)
In case anyone is interested, http://appaholic.com/display/2354684299 this are our users stats courtesy of appaholic.com which is wicked cool site for tracking FB apps!
peace,
mario romero
July 15th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
OMG!!! thanks for sharing this…i’m addicated to your blog lol
July 15th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
it’s kind of funny to read the comments here, you can tell when it hit the digg front page.
what mario is doing is reminding me of stumbleupon a bit, in that “top shared” sense. the only diff is that with his app, you see where you’re going. but the distributed nature is the same, and i like it.
July 15th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
hehe yeah thats pretty awesome i guess but i dont know because i cant tell whats going on?
July 15th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
facebook sucks no way.
July 15th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
There is another similar Facebook App - Friends Feed Me. You can upload OPML from your RSS reader and get RSS feed recommendations, feeds popular among your friends, etc. Check it out at http://app.friendsfeedme.com/
July 16th, 2007 at 12:20 am
CoReap does something similar, if I understand it right, displaying your & your friends links/bookmarks within Google/Yahoo web search. ref: http://www.coreap.com/
July 16th, 2007 at 1:01 am
“we are media”
That would be true if we were actually generating the stories, but in most cases we are just consuming the same media, much of it “old media.”
July 16th, 2007 at 2:12 am
[...] Ryan Stewart: Rich Internet Applications, SEO and Accessibility. Jason O’Grady: Over 150 iPhone Web applications available. Hack: Custom iPhone ringtones. Paul Murphy: Securing the PC. Tom Foremski: Are you a widget or are you a business? Robert Scoble: Google Reader + Facebook Application = Digg killer? [...]
July 16th, 2007 at 2:55 am
I never felt I had much use for Google’s shared items. Who would read/subscribe to the naked feed of a lot of links? This solves that. A very cool app indeed.
July 16th, 2007 at 3:39 am
[...] Romero has built something very interesting that’s getting more interesting all the time.read more | digg [...]
July 16th, 2007 at 4:46 am
Now if I could only get google reader to auto share a feed - say my Tumblr RSS..
July 16th, 2007 at 6:06 am
I totally disagree that Facebook will ever be a Digg killer. First, there are a lot of people who will never use Facebook because of it’s nasty nature of data collection. I know it is hard to believe, but there still are a lot of people that do not feel the need to 1. exploit themselves all over the web and 2. do research into the tools they are using to understand what the purpose behind the app really is.
Many of us are not looking for an ‘all in one’ community like you’re trying to make Facebook into. Digg, Reddit and the other similar sites serve a singular news purpose, that of news aggregation and that’s what we like them for.
Thank you for the post, I did find it interesting and I am investigating Google Reader.
July 16th, 2007 at 6:11 am
I’ll give this a try - DIGG is a lot of work.
July 16th, 2007 at 6:47 am
No Way! You have over 3,000 friends? I wish I could be as cool as you…
July 16th, 2007 at 6:55 am
It would be really cool if instead of just friends, it picked up ‘group’ shared info as well. Because the people in groups are more ‘likemind’ than people I am friends with (sometimes)
July 16th, 2007 at 7:13 am
The real power for this is when it comes the enterprise level and gets adopted with the Enterprise 2.0 platforms already existing.
It’s really odd that there isn’t a proper mashup tool like this. I’ve been looking for some Digg-like tools (white label diggs) but none of them play well with RSS or even other RSS readers.
These kinds of Auto-recommendation and collaborative filtering tools are what’s going to make it big.
July 16th, 2007 at 7:22 am
[...] Google Reader + Facebook Application = Digg killer? Very interesting idea… (tags: applications bookmarking digg facebook google plugin social tools web2.0) [...]
July 16th, 2007 at 7:51 am
Backtracking on Technorati from sites linking to yours gives you sites linked to them. Simply by association of interests you find interesting blogs.
I fell over some more work they’re doing as well and expect new facilities soon. Rights now they’ve asked for peace and quiet while coding.
July 16th, 2007 at 8:59 am
Wow, that sounds great.
Starting Today
I See Dc
July 16th, 2007 at 10:52 am
Dude, now they added the words “As seen on Scobleizer…” to the widget profile. Your dinner with Matt should be really nice. Maybe he should take you to French Laundry…. periodically:).
July 16th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
@Herb: That is an awesome idea! I’ll look into it.
July 16th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
[...] This makes it the Swiss Army Knife of social networking websites, since there is so much that you can do with the platform. You can integrate Facebook with a whole lot of other services such as your own WordPress blog (my own blog posts get reproduced on my Facebook profile via the RSS feed) or even Wikipedia if you are that way inclined. A particularly useful application that has recently been launched is Google Reader Shared Items, which allows you to share interesting items in your RSS feeds with your friends very easily. Scoble loves it. [...]
July 16th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
[...] In the last few days I’ve heard the death knell being rung for email, that people are abandoning their proven business networking applications, and that Digg will soon be dead. [...]
July 16th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
[...] Google Reader + Facebook Application = Digg killer? Mario Romero has built something very interesting that’s getting more interesting all the time. (tags: digg TechIndustryNews Technology) Like this Article? Subscribe [...]
July 17th, 2007 at 3:16 am
[...] I couldn’t resist any longer. Scoble’s recent post about this killer Google Reader application forced me to sign up for yet another pointless, [...]
July 17th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
[...] Google Reader + Facebook Application = Digg killer? Add the Google Reader app to Facebook, and you can see your shared items, your friends’ shared items, and top shared items. (tags: facebook google googlereader web2.0 tools social applications bookmarking digg) [...]
July 17th, 2007 at 12:28 pm
[...] what I wrote about using Google Reader and mash it up with what Robert Scoble wrote about the Google Reader/Facebook tool, and now you’ve built a really interesting information [...]
July 17th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Robert, thanks for the tip on the app - I had it installed, but didn’t look any further than the base functionality.
July 20th, 2007 at 1:56 am
[...] Scoble called this a Digg killer, particularly when it comes to the Facebook application’s “top stories” [...]
July 21st, 2007 at 1:06 pm
[...] [FACEBOOK] Google Reader + Facebook Application = Digg killer? (scobleizer.com, 98 saves, 70 inbound links, 818 diggs) [...]
July 26th, 2007 at 12:49 am
I somehow doubt that people would migrate from digg. The sheer number of trolls there shows that.
July 26th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Any chance this could be modified to allow tagging and sorting/displaying by top posts for a particular tag? That would make it much more useful.
July 29th, 2007 at 12:58 pm
[...] google reader long time back and wasn’t impressed. However after its relaunch and increase in traffic from Facebook I took notice of it again and liked it this time around. I don’t know how Scoble keeps up [...]
July 31st, 2007 at 2:15 am
[...] Google Reader & Facebook = Digg Killer? Robert Scoble has an interesting view point and certainly what looks like the next social idea [...]
August 6th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Google Reader for your cell phone.
Asterbox.com announces the beta release of their Java mobile platform. They have openly declared what many users have felt: surfing the web on a mobile device is a disappointing experience. Their claims that the internet on the phone is dead, but can live on through web services have been embodied in the Asterbox mobile platform. The Java-based platform utilizes web APIs to deliver content and interactivity to end users in a new and innovative way. The software currently provides access to the Google Reader service, but more functionality is in the works.
August 14th, 2007 at 1:00 pm
[...] Robert Scoble hyped the Google Reader Shared Items yet it has plateaued at 5,921 users. [...]
August 19th, 2007 at 10:37 am
[...] Curtain Number Four: Robert Scoble What he said: “Google Reader + Facebook Application = Digg [...]
August 19th, 2007 at 7:05 pm
[...] has an interesting writing style and his "Digg Killer" article concerns Google Reader and Facebook. The occurrence of words in his article are not nearly as [...]
August 21st, 2007 at 2:27 pm
[...] but also from the growing incorporation of news feeds into social media platforms. With the recent hypearound Google Reader on Facebook as an example, more and more users will consume their news in areas [...]
October 1st, 2007 at 3:07 am
[...] Google Reader Facebook Application = Digg killer? « Scobleizer [...]
December 29th, 2007 at 8:52 am
I don’t think anything will kill digg, perhaps sites like http://www.thatsprofound.com will pop up every now and again. But I seriously doubt any will pose a serious threat.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:50 am
[...] já em meados do ano passado, um conhecido blogueiro norte-americano chamado Robert Scoble, já comentava que uma aplicação com tais características seria um rival à altura para o [...]
February 2nd, 2008 at 6:57 am
[...] I couldn’t resist any longer. Scoble’s recent post about this killer Google Reader application forced me to sign up for yet another pointless, [...]